WE SLEEP IN THE TINY CABIN, moored to its slip. Tight quarters, but that hardly seems to matter: all nightlong, she fits herself around me. She snores, just a little. Her front tooth is crooked. Her eyelashes are as longas the nail of my thumb.

These are the minutiae that prove, more than anything else, the difference between us now that fifteen yearshave passed. When you’re seventeen, you don’t think about whose apartment you want to sleep in. Whenyou’re seventeen, you don’t even see the pearl-pink of her bra, the lace that arrows between her legs. Whenyou’re seventeen it’s all about the now, not the after.

What I had loved about Julia—there, I’ve said it now—was that she didn’t need anyone. At Wheeler, evenwhen she stood out with her pink hair and quilted army-surplus jacket and combat boots, she did this withoutapology. It was a great irony that the very fact of a relationship with her would diminish her appeal, that themoment she came to love me back and depend on me as much as I depended on her, she would no longer bea truly independent spirit.

No way in hell was I going to be the one to take that quality away from her.

After Julia, there weren’t all that many women. None whose names I took the time to remember, anyway. Itwas far too complicated to maintain the fa.ade; instead, I chose the coward’s rocky route of one-night stands.

Out of necessity—medical and emotional—I have gotten rather skilled at being an escape artist.

But there are a half-dozen times this past night when I had the opportunity to leave. While Julia was sleeping,I even considered how to do it: a note pinned to the pillow, a message scrawled on the deck with her cherrylipstick. And yet the urge to do this was nowhere near as strong as the need to wait just one more minute, onemore hour.

From the spot where he’s curled up on the galley table tight as a cinnamon bun, Judge raises his head. Hewhines a little, and I completely understand. Detangling myself from Julia’s rich forest of hair, I slip out ofthe bed. She inches into the warm spot I’ve left behind.

I swear, it makes me hard again.

But instead of doing what comes naturally—that is, calling in sick with some latent strain of smallpox andmaking the clerk of the court reschedule the hearing so that I can spend the day getting laid—I pull on mypants and go above-deck. I want to make sure I’m at the courthouse before Anna, and need to shower andchange. I leave Julia the keys to my car—it’s a short walk to my place. It’s only when Judge and I are on ourway home that I realize unlike every other bloodshot morning that I have left a woman, I haven’t fashionedsome charming symbol of my exit for Julia, something to lessen the blow of abandonment upon waking.

I wonder if this was an oversight. Or if I have been waiting all this time for her to come back, so that I cangrow up.

When Judge and I arrive at the Garrahy building for the hearing, we have to fight our way through thereporters who have lined up for the Main Event. They thrust microphones in my face, and inadvertently stepon Judge’s paws. Anna will take one look at walking this gaunt-let, and bolt.

Inside the front door, I flag down Vern. “Get us some security out here, will you?” I tell him. “They’re goingto eat the witnesses alive.”

Then I see Sara Fitzgerald, already waiting. She is wearing a suit that most likely hasn’t seen the outside ofthe plastic dry cleaner’s bag for a decade, and her hair is pulled back severely into a barrette. She doesn’tcarry a briefcase, but a knapsack instead. “Good morning,” I say evenly.

The door blows open and Brian enters, looking from Sara to me. “Where’s Anna?”

Sara takes a step forward. “Didn’t she come here with you?”

“She was already gone when I got back from a call at five A.M. She left a note and said she’d meet me here.”

He glances at the door, at the jackals on the other side. “I bet she took off.”

Again, there is the sound of a seal being breached, and then Julia surfs into the courthouse on a crest ofshouts and questions. She smooths back her hair, gets her bearings, then looks at me and loses them again.

“I’ll find her,” I say.

Sara bristles. “No, I will.”

Julia looks at each of us. “Find who?”

“Anna is temporarily absent,” I explain.

“Absent?” Julia says. “As in disappeared?”

“Not at all.” This isn’t a lie, either. For Anna to have disappeared, she would have had to appear in the firstplace.

I realize that I even know where I am headed—at the same moment that Sara understands it, too. In thatmoment she lets me take the lead. Julia grabs my arm as I am walking toward the door. She shoves my carkeys into my hand. “Now you do understand why this isn’t going to work?”

I turn to her. “Julia, listen. I want to talk about what’s going on between us, too. But this isn’t the right time.”

“I was talking about Anna. Campbell, she’s waffling. She couldn’t even show up for her own court date.

What does that say to you?”

“That everyone gets scared,” I answer finally, fair warning for all of us.

spaceThe shades to the hospital room are drawn, but that doesn’t keep me from seeing the angel pallor of KateFitzgerald’s face, the web of blue veins mapping out the last-chance path of medication running under herskin. Curled up on the foot of the bed is Anna.

At my command, Judge waits by the door. I crouch down. “Anna, it’s time to go.”

When the door to the hospital room opens, I’m expecting either Sara Fitzgerald or a doctor with a crash cart.

Instead, to my shock, Jesse stands on the threshold. “Hey,” he says, as if we are old friends.

How did you get here? I almost ask, but realize I don’t want to hear the answer. “We’re on our way to thecourthouse. Need a lift?” I ask dryly.

“No thanks. I thought since everyone was going to be there, I’d stay here.” His eyes do not waver from Kate.

“She looks like shit.”

“What do you expect,” Anna answers, awake now. “She’s dying.”

Again, I find myself staring at my client. I should know better than most that motivations are never what theyseem to be, but I still cannot figure her out. “We need to go.”

In the car, Anna rides shotgun while Judge takes a seat in the back. She starts telling me about some crazyprecedent she found on the internet, where a guy in Montana in 1876 was legally prohibited from using thewater from a river that originated on his brother’s land, even though it meant all his crops would dry up.

“What are you doing?” she asks, when I deliberately miss the turn to the courthouse.

Instead I pull over next to a park. A girl with a great ass jogs by, holding on to the leash of one of thosefroufrou dogs that looks more like a cat. “We’re gonna be late,” Anna says after a moment.

“We already are. Look, Anna. What’s going on here?”

She gives me one of those patented teenage looks, as if to say that there’s no way she and I descended fromthe same evolutionary chain. “We’re going to court.”

“That’s not what I’m asking. I want to know why we’re going to court.”

“Well, Campbell, I guess you cut the first day of law school, but that’s pretty much what happens whensomeone files a lawsuit.”

I level my gaze on her, refusing to be bested. “Anna, why are we going to court?”

She doesn’t blink. “Why do you have a service dog?”

I rap my fingers on the steering wheel and look out over the park. A mother pushes a stroller now, across thesame spot where the jogger was, oblivious to the kid who’s trying his best to crawl out. A titter of birdsexplodes from a tree. “I don’t talk about this with anyone,” I say.

“I’m not just anyone.”

I take a deep breath. “A long time ago I got sick and wound up with an ear infection. But for whateverreason, the medicine didn’t work and I got nerve damage. I’m totally deaf in my left ear. Which isn’t such abig deal, in the long run, but there are certain lifestyle issues I couldn’t handle. Like hearing a car approach,you know, but not being able to tell what direction it’s coming from. Or having someone behind me at thegrocery store who wants to pass by me in the aisle, but I don’t hear her ask. I got trained with Judge so that inthose circumstances, he could be my ears.” I hesitate. “I don’t like people feeling sorry for me. Hence, the bigsecret.”

Anna stares at me carefully. “I came to your office because just for once, I wanted it to be about me insteadof Kate.”

But this selfish confession saws out of her sideways; it just doesn’t fit. This lawsuit has never been aboutAnna wanting her sister to die, but simply that she wants a chance to live. “You’re lying.”

Anna crosses her arms. “Well, you lied first. You hear perfectly fine.”

“And you’re a brat.” I start to laugh. “You remind me of me.”

“Is that supposed to be a good thing?” Anna says, but she’s smiling.

The park is starting to get more crowded. An entire school group walks the path, toddlers tethered togetherlike sled-dog huskies, pulling two teachers in their wake. Someone zooms past on a racing bike, wearing thecolors of the U.S. Postal Service. “C’mon. I’ll treat you to breakfast.”

“But we’re late.”

I shrug. “Who’s counting?”

Judge DeSalvo is not a happy man; Anna’s little field trip this morning has cost us an hour and a half. Heglares at me when Judge and I hurry into his chambers for the pretrial conference. “Your Honor, I apologize.

We had a veterinary emergency.”

I feel, rather than see, Sara’s mouth drop open. “That’s not what opposing counsel indicated,” the judge says.

I look DeSalvo right in the eye. “Well, it’s what happened. Anna was kind enough to help me by keeping thedog calm while the sliver of glass was removed from his paw.”

The judge is dubious. But there are laws against handicapped discrimination, and I’m playing them to thehilt; the last thing I want is for him to blame Anna for this delay. “Is there any way of resolving this petitionwithout a hearing?” he asks.

“I’m afraid not.” Anna may not be willing to share her secrets, which I can only respect, but she knows thatshe wants to go through with this.

The judge accepts my answer. “Mrs. Fitzgerald, I take it you’re still representing yourself?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” she says.

“All right then.” Judge DeSalvo glances at each of us. “This is family court, Counselors. In family court, andespecially in hearings like these, I tend to personall............